The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of child-centered play therapy on children of Piaget's preoperational and concrete operations developmental stages. Piaget's assertions about the contributions of play to cognitive, affective, and social development have provided a basis for the theoretical rationale for the use of play as a therapeutic intervention. The impact of child-centered play therapy was measured by a decrease in parent-child relationship stress as measured by scores on the Child Domain, Parent Domain, and Total Stress Score of the Parenting Stress Index. This study utilized a three wave repeated measures ANOVA design to analyze the impact of child-centered play therapy on children between the ages of 3-8 who received 19-23 individual child-centered play therapy sessions. A pretest, approximate midpoint, and posttest administration was collected for use in the analysis. The population study comprised 24 children referred to the Child and Family Resource Clinic on the University of North Texas campus. Participating children were divided into two treatment groups based on their age at the time of treatment. The preoperational development treatment group consisted of 12 children aged of 3-6 years and the concrete operations development treatment group consisted of children aged 7-8 years. Nine hypotheses were tested using three wave repeated measures ANOVA and eta squared. The results of this study tentatively support the impact of child-centered play therapy with children of both the preoperational and concrete operations developmental stages. The data indicates a statistically significant difference in the impact of child-centered play therapy for children of different developmental stages.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc5287 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Dougherty, Jennifer L. |
| Contributors | Ray, Dee, Chandler, Cynthia K., Barrio, Casey |
| Publisher | University of North Texas |
| Source Sets | University of North Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | Text |
| Rights | Public, Copyright, Dougherty, Jennifer L., Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. |
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